EP 521 – The 500 Club With Thom Singer

This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now, here's your host CEO of We Close notes, Scott Carson.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of a dual 500 episode champions out there of podcasters out there, myself, Scott Carson. But I'm excited to have Tom Singer.

From Cool Things Entrepreneurs do joining Scott Carson. We both just topped 500 episodes. That's wickedly crazy.

It is wickedly crazy. And you think about the dedication goes from that. You've been podcasting though longer than I have, Tom, so why don't we talk start first with you, since you're the elder statesman of the podcasters here.

I started Cool Things Entrepreneurs do five years ago with the intent of just having access to some really smart people who've done cool things. Because I don't know a lot in this world, Scott, but I know one thing and that is success leaves clues. So I thought I would do like 50 interviews just to get around 50 successful entrepreneurs and solopreneurs. By the time I hit 50, I was just sort of getting the bug and figured I'd have to do 500 before I'd be any good at it. So now I'm over that 500 mark.

Well, congratulations to that. That's five years is great. I've been doing this for really truly podcasting for just over two years, although I've had my show for three because I just started doing Facebook Lives. I mean, we've always done video training and webinars all the time to my audience and stuff like that. My show, the Nook show, is a very niche show on the niche of real estate investing. So you're doing Facebook Lives when they came out live.

Do you do it five days a week then?

We try to do it at least three days of the week. Sometimes it's five, sometimes we record seven episodes, just depending on the schedule. But yeah, we're usually when I look back at the numbers, we've averaged basically three and a half episodes per week for the last two plus years.

Obviously, based on math, I do two shows a week. Five years.

Yeah, exactly. So you've been doing it for five years. Why don't you share with people what your full time gig is, Tom?

Yeah, I'm a really fortunate guy. I used to be a sales and marketing Executive. And when you're in sales and marketing, you go to a lot of conferences. And I'd sit there and I'd watch these keynote speakers. And some of them were famous, but a lot of them were just people with an idea, a thought, a theory. And I would watch them on stage and I literally would sit there and think they have a better job than I do. And about 15 years ago, I started thinking, I want to do that. And 10 years ago I went full time as a professional speaker and corporate trainer, going into association annual meetings or company like sales kickoffs and being that guy who comes in and brings real content, but at the same time, the ability to sort of motivate and inspire that team to actually take action. So that's what I do. That's all I do for a living. I speak about 40 or 50 times a year all over the country, and I've been doing that for 10 years.

And your audiences vary from size to size too. What's the biggest audience you spoke in front of and then what's the smallest one that you're still speaking in front of?

So I have served as the master of ceremonies for like three and four five day conferences for audiences as big as six and 8,000 people. And sometimes I will actually be one of the speakers involved in that as well. And then on top of that, I have done groups as small as 12, so it's really everything in between.

Nice. That's awesome. I've traveled the last couple years speaking to audiences in the real estate community. The largest audience I spoke to is from 2500, and the smallest one has been in front of 10. As I'm out speaking and teaching this little aspect, I'm like one of three or four people in the country that teach this little specific niche of note investing and got started doing that 10 years ago when the market turned south. I was a mortgage banker, mortgage broker. And when everything turned south, I just jumped on the other side, sort of buying. So originating the loans, we were buying the debt and then working it out. And so it's been interesting. If you think about your podcasting stuff, Tom, what's one thing that's happened because of your podcast that really surprised you? Maybe out of left field, something you.

Didn'T expect early on when the podcast was new, I kind of get five years ago, it was before everyone had a podcast. I actually started my podcast the same day Gary Vaynerchuk launched his podcast. So all the celebrities sort of came in after I got on. But early on, I quickly got a Lot of listeners because there wasn't all this noise out there. And I was surprised that people who listened to the first 25 shows were referring me to their bosses who were having meetings. Right. So they were actually referring me. So I don't know that I expected to get actual paid speaking work out of it, especially because the title cool things entrepreneurs do isn't really what I talk about. So that was probably the first big surprise. The second thing is I now co host a show called the Digital Enterprise Society Podcast. And it's for people who work in and around what's called product lifecycle management. There's a specific set of software and I have been hired by the Digital Enterprise Society to help launch their podcast as their co host. And that's actually a paid gig for me. I've done work for them as a speaker and so that's something I never thought of. I'm now in negotiation with two other associations to host their shows and that was probably the biggest surprise.

That's awesome. That's really cool. One of the biggest surprises that's come from me doing this is that we've actually started, we've gotten so good at it. And with our niche and with our peers that we've had on the real estate community, a lot of them have come to me and asked me to start helping market them.

I think it's interesting how you've taken such a small niche. I mean, when you think about it, it's not just real estate. You're talking specifically about notes and stuff like that and the popularity that you have been able to grow out of being super niched. Where I think if I was to start my show today, I would probably go more niche. This, having this broader entrepreneurship show made sense five years ago. I think if I was restarting today, I would go tighter. My content that I speak about has changed in the last five years. I've morphed a little bit from one topic to another. It's not a huge change, but I think if I started the show today, I would be focused specifically on. On the gap that exists between potential and performance for individuals and teams, because that's what I teach. However, at the time, you gotta take everything in perspective when you made decisions. So I made the right decision five years ago. Now I would be super niche like you are.

Yeah, the niche has been good because the fact that we really dominate that niche aspect of things. There's not many people doing what I do and very few are doing a podcast, especially doing it for two plus years now. So that's been surprising, the success of the show. I mean, I thought we'd maybe cap out at like 10,000 downloads a month, and we're gonna hit 30,000 downloads again this month. And it's led to interesting people signing up for it. We monetize in a different fashion a little bit. We get people that sign up for our workshops and our coaching. You're getting paid speaking gigs from the show. It's just, it's building notoriety for yourself. We're both experts in our fields, but I think it adds an extra level to it. Huh.

I definitely see that in this last year, since I had crossed the 400 mark. Last year, I started having my bio, my introduction. When people introduced me to come speak to their group. It includes, oh, Andy's the host of the popular Cool Things Entrepreneurs do podcast. Now four years and 400 episodes. Of course, now it's five years and 500 episodes. And what amazed me when I added that to my introduction, the amount of people who line up with their phones in their hands. 500 marks. So few podcasts have been around that long, have that kind of longevity. I mean, they talk about podcasts dying somewhere between seven and 12 episodes. Most of them die out by 25. Some people just do 15 series run. Just to do a little bit. To be at that level is starting to get me more attention. And that surprised me.

I think it's 1/10 of 1% of podcasts cross the 300 episode mark. And so, yeah, you, me, and we know some other friends that have done really well with podcasts, like our buddy Steve Ulcer and some others out there that are doing well. But, yeah, it's kind of rarefied error to stick with it that long. I think the numbers that we officially saw was that there were 760,000 podcasts and only 18% of those have produced episodes in the last six to 12 months. So less than 20% are constantly cranking content out.

I'm always surprised on sort of the rankings on itunes. I guess now it's Apple podcasts. How many are ranking really high who haven't produced new episodes in a year? I mean, their algorithm's not really necessarily working unless those shows are tied to a celebrity where maybe they're getting a ton of downloads and stuff. Some of these shows, it's like, why is this still ranking?

Well, I think it's also because I had a friend of a friend tell me they only have like a dozen people working in the podcast office, so they don't really rank that much change.

The rankings, 700,000 podcasts, six people working.

Well, if you didn't know this, Starbucks, with a $24 billion company, has 12 people working in their social media office in Seattle. But the thing that kind of cracks me up a little bit about this is I think people are surprised to meet you. We get that all the time when people are listening to the show and then either will opt into something or give my office a phone call and that they can actually get ahold of us and actually talk to us right tomorrow.

Yeah. They think, oh, my gosh, this is Scott. I have. I'm talking to the real Scott Carson. You answer your own phone talking to Tom Singer.

Wow.

Well, the thing. It's only happened a couple of times, but I've been out in the wild just going about my life, and I'm telling a story to somebody over a beer in a bar, and somebody a couple bar stools away goes, are you Tom? Are you the cool things entrepreneurs do guy? And that blows me away because it's like, I don't even have as many listeners as you do. I get about a thousand downloads per episode, which in the podcast world is good, but huge. But still, I'll get people who listen to it. So I always ask people, how did you even find my show? Like, when I meet random people, I'm like, how did you even discover it? The number one way people find my show is somebody they know told them.

Well, we see the same numbers. Roughly about 1,000 an episode. We're just cranking. Yeah. More per month, but thousand an episode is roughly what we're seeing. Maybe a little bit more. Depends on what you think. But I've had that happen one time on a plane, which is kind of funny. I was flying to San Diego for a marketing convention, saw a friend of mine, actually an old assistant, so we got too busy talking, sat next to each other and visiting. And we got off the plane. I go get my luggage, and my friend is waiting there. She went to the bathroom and came out, and there was a lady with her, and she goes, oh, yeah. She asked me if you were Scott Carson from the Nutcloses show. And I was like. She came up like, oh. I was like, come on, here's my car. Give me a phone call. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

And I'm like, I'm just a normal guy just cranking out content every day.

Right. Well, I definitely think talking about both of us topping this 500 mark, which I think it's a big deal. I think that a lot of People don't have the stick to itiveness. There's a lot of people out there teaching how to get rich on podcasts and they tell people all these little tricks and things like that. And they're using the outliers. I mean, of these 700,000, they're using like the seven people who were able to monetize to a million dollars in eight seconds. Or they're using the model of a celebrity who is already famous. And so people are getting very disheartened with oh yeah, I feed all the time. I did a show and couldn't get anybody to listen. How many episodes did you do? 18. I looked at this all along as it was a long tail play. It's also been huge at helping me with search engine optimization because page that I use for my podcast is part of tomsinger.com, so it's tomsinger.com podcast and I'm able to link and cross link and backlink to that. And it's actually helped my search engine optimization for my main business because of the twice a week I'm creating a page.

I totally agree to that. I'm so glad you brought that up because we saw that immediately where my page ranked like 75 keywords and now it ranks for over 1800 different keywords. And we've gone from 1500 visits to the website a month to over 12. Somewhere between 10, 12,000 hits to the website a month because we do the same thing. We take each episode, create a blog, post it on the website and it's just huge. You talking about people getting discouraged because they're not monetizing or making a thousand million bucks in two episodes. It is a long term play, a long form play to do it because you've got to keep providing content. And most people I talk to and see this and this just kind of, this is a burn myself, I guess you could say, is when people say, well, I've launched for six episodes, nobody's listening. And I'm like, well, are you doing this or this? No, I don't want to do all that work. Well, you got to do the work if you want to get the pay and make it profitable. Right?

Right. And I think, like I said, my podcast is not my business. It is a piece of my business. So it's a credibility tool. It's a marketing tool. I have used it to get in touch with people or I didn't use it as sort of a dastardly plan, but I've interviewed people who then I've developed a relationship with. And then they've referred me to an association or their company because they were a guest. And so I think that if you go in thinking this is going to be my whole world, yes, there are people who have turned a podcast into their whole business. However, I think that we can count those numbers probably on two hands. And I think that the real value to having a podcast is in that longevity and how do you touch it and tie it to different things. And I mentioned before that I've sort of switched what I speak about. And it's not a drastic change, but I'm really focused on this gap between potential and performance. And I ask the people who come on my show, all of the entrepreneurs for the last several years, three years probably, why do you think some people are able to get farther across the gap between having potential and getting results? And some people fall into the abyss. And the answers that they've fed me, 300 entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, business leaders, the answers that they've given me have actually written partially this content that I'm sharing out with other people. So all of a sudden, I'm starting to get inquiries to talk at entrepreneur conferences, which isn't what I set out to do. But Having interviewed over 400 entrepreneurs, people are like, well, you had to have learned something. And so I'm in the process of actually now working on sort of a new side talk. What entrepreneurs tell what successful entrepreneurs tell me.

That's awesome, man. That's really cool. Because it's the whole thing of business evolving as you get better at your craft or honing your message gets better. I haven't listened to my first 10 episodes, but I guarantee, I think we would all cringe going back and listening to the first 10 to what we're at doing now. Right.

Well, I think that's the other thing is it's, it's you. Certainly I've watched your episodes. You are a great interviewer. And I bet you weren't when you first said, I'm gonna do a Facebook Live tonight. I bet you were not a great. I bet you were good because you got a tastic personality. You're a fun guy to be around. But I bet if you look at over the past 500 interviews that you've done, it's made you better. And I know that's true for me because I now one of the things I offer my clients when I'm serving as the master of ceremonies is I can stay and facilitate your executive panel or if you have a keynote speaker Give them 50 minutes, not an hour. I'll come out for the last 10 minutes and I'll ask him some questions. And audiences usually say, that's the best part of the keynote. That was better than their talk. You really picked up on something that they said that was a throwaway line. How come you're so good at that? And I go, I couldn't have done it until I started this podcast.

Yeah, I think we all evolve our skills, and that's the thing. I appreciate the comment. You're a great interviewer as well. I love listening to your show and hearing some of the questions that are kind of, I think, that your guests aren't expecting. And that actually really does pull out some really great content and really gets the audience to really get to know that person a little bit better, versus, I think a lot of speakers or executives or people get used to saying the same thing over and over again. And I think anytime you can kind of throw them off their saddle or their horse a little bit there to get them to think a little bit differently, I think it adds volumes to that episode, Especially if somebody's been speaking or guests on other podcasts. It really helps set yourself apart, right?

Yeah. And I mean, I have set questions that I follow, but I go off of them. And so if somebody says something, it's like, ooh, let's go deeper. So sometimes we don't get to all the questions. But one of my set questions that I always try to get to is, who in the entrepreneur sphere, the world of entrepreneurs, who do you admire? And a lot of people will give me an Elon Musk or Richard Branson or whoever, Steve Jobs, whatever. But every now and then, someone will say, and this will be someone with like, a billion dollar company or multimillion dollar company anyway. And they'll be like, my dry cleaner. And I'll be like, okay, let's talk about that. And then we'll unpack why they've picked someone obscure when they could have easily said Steve Jobs. And those are some of the most insightful things when people really go with something that isn't the canned answer.

Now, is there somebody out there, celebrity podcaster, speaker, that you really look up to? Let's just ask that question. There's somebody that you admire in this industry or in your industry or outside the industry that you really look to.

Well, I think if we look at the speaking industry, my idol, I mean, I know him. We could be better friends. I've just always been like, oh, my God, I can't Talk to him. And as it turns out, I could. But it's a guy named Mark Schrenbrock, and if you've been to a lot of conferences, you've seen him speak. Tagline is nice bike. He owns a Harley. He talks about when you get around Harley people. Kind of the slang word is nice bike. And then he interprets that back to, what's the slang word in your industry? How do you become part of the family? What can you say? But his content's great. But Mark is the greatest storyteller I have ever seen. So if I can watch him on video or live and watch how he tells a story and weaves the content into the story with emotion and pauses. So I admire Mark probably more than anybody else. In fact, I saw him speak. He was the closing keynoter at the National Speakers association, like, five years ago. And halfway through his closing keynote, I leaned over to my friend and said, I'm quitting this business because I'll never be that good. So he's one of those people in the speaking business, you take it over to podcasting. And I'm not pandering. You've become one of those people. And the reason I admire you is, number one, yeah, you do a good show. Two, you're really inclusive. You invite everybody into your tent, whether they're new or old. You're putting together gatherings of podcasters in the city, in Austin, where we live and beyond. But here's the reason I admire you. And I've never told you this, so I'll just pander it out there. You are always looking two or three steps ahead at how do you do this? And, I mean, I've been successful in my life, but I tend to be on the step that I'm on. And the reason I admire you is I like the way you look at a scene and say, have you tried that? I'm like, no, I haven't even mastered this. And you're like, yeah, but what about that? And then that and then that. And I'm like, whoa, slow down, Scott. So you and Joel Block both think that way, and we have a mutual friend in Joel, and I'm trying to learn to be more that way so people like you.

Well, I appreciate that, man. I would say the same thing back about you. I admire anybody. Been around 5 plus years at this and doing a great job, and I enjoy speaking. And then seeing you going out and speaking in all the places, that's actually something that I aspire to do because I think everybody hits ups and lows in our business of any sort like that. In my kind of niche here, we've had our highs and we've kind of, as the market changes, we're kind of coming down a little bit. So I don't know how I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep doing this show, but it's, it's. The market's changing. So it's always made me kind of look to always have something else that we could look at or look. Try to keep ahead of the pace in the market and try to. I'm a big believer in servant leadership. If you can bring people along and help make others successful, it'll make you successful along the way as well. But I guess my big guy would be Seth Godin. I'm a huge fan of him, Love listening to him. Had a chance to meet with him a couple times. I've not had him on my podcast yet. That will be a goal.

Come on, Seth, be on the Note Closer show.

Yeah, he doesn't quite fit well in the Note Closure show, but he'll probably fit well with our podcasters livestream or another one that we're probably going to be launching soon. And that's the thing. You do two shows. This has been the Mind show. I've got a couple smaller shows that I do that kind of sublets of my industry. But I think we're going to be starting a newer, purely kind of a podcasting marketing business entrepreneur show to help accentuate some things and identify those that are making a difference out there in their niche.

That's one of the things I kind of watch what you're doing with how you market your show and the way you tie in the video and the different things. And I don't do any of that. So it's like I watch it and think I gotta learn how to do that. So I think a show on how to market your podcast. Since there are 700,000 podcasts out there, I bet you could get a couple people to tune in and listen. I think it's a great idea.

My goal would be to help the 82% of people that have stopped, help them get launched back up and get rock and roll. Cause that's the thing. I think a lot of people I see now. Do you do your own production on your podcast?

No, I'm actually sponsored by a company called Podfly Productions. And if you don't mind, because they sponsor me, this is airing on my show too. I got to do. I'll do the abbreviated version because they sponsor my show. So if you're listening to this on Cool Things Entrepreneurs do, this episode is brought to you by Podfly Productions. Podfly takes the time and the headache out of creating your own podcast. And the commercial usually goes longer. I won't submit your listeners to it, but I will tell you, I never could have done this podcast if I hadn't partnered with Podfly from episode one, because I would never do the technical work and the heavy lifting. God knows what would happen if we had a coughing fit. I couldn't fix it. Podfly does all that, and they're the best vendor I've ever worked with in any job, in any career. They are so good if something's not perfect, because, let's face it, they're going to blow a deadline or I'm going to blow a deadline. And they are just so good to work with. I call them the best vendor I've ever seen. I couldn't do the show without podfly.

I agree, man. I don't do my own production. We've got a company called Poditize. Some friends, Tom and Tracy Hasser out at Irvine that do tremendous job. All I gotta do is send them the video or the audio and they do everything else. And then my staff takes what they've done and then reshares it across different platforms through buffer and some things like that. But, yeah, I didn't want to have. I think everybody, especially a lot of entrepreneurs, are control freaks. I didn't want to be the control freak when it came to production. So I'm like, I'll pay to have it done.

It'll eat your time. Even if you had the technical skills to be able to do the editing, I mean, it's just. It's three times the time. That recording would.

Amen to that. So that's the best thing, to delegate that out, to focus on what you're good at and let the other experts go out and do it right.

Hey, I want to jump back, like, two things, though, because I was talking about this gap between potential and performance, and then we got talking about podcasts. So let's twist these two things together. You observe a lot more than I do, and you play in the pool with a lot more podcasters. I mean, I have a lot of podcaster friends, but your fingers go deeper than mine. Why do you think so? People start a podcast, they all have potential. Everybody has an idea. Everybody has some nuggets and theories that they can share with people. Why do you think some people. We all start with potential. Some people get farther across and get a lot of listeners, or they get a lot of longevity and they're able to build something. They have performance and results. And other people just fall into the depth of just another boring podcast. What do you think that Delta is?

I would say the difference between those people is that it's a lack of patience. They have unrealistic expectations and they think that if they do throw 10 episodes out there, that they're automatically gonna have success. A lot of people release like one episode, One episode, one episode. So they don't have a library for people to listen to, to binge on. And I think that's the heroin crack that I think listeners need. And so that's when I been out networking and other things at PodFest, podcast movement or local networking clubs. That's the thing I get, oh, I uploaded two episodes and I didn't get any listeners. I'm like, you have to give it time for those seeds to sprout, to grow.

I agree. I think you have to launch with three, four, five, six episodes. Because people do when they listen to one, they want more that they can listen to. The other thing is, I think you have to follow a schedule. I mean, I said two days a week and I've probably missed less than 10 over five years where I've just said I can't get an episode out today. And when I've done that, people have actually emailed me and said, where's my Tuesday episode? I always listen on Wednesday on my way to work. So your listeners get accustomed to the habit of I release on Tuesday and Thursday, so my people listen on Wednesday and Thursday or Wednesday and Friday. I think that there's something to do along those lines. And the other thing is, you can't have an occasional podcast because I know people who are like, oh, my podcast, dah dah. And they release two shows, then six months later a show, and I'm like, nobody's listening. Don't tell me you have a lot of listeners. And I'm sure there are outliers who they're not famous and they do like nine episodes in a year and they dump them here and there's. And people are like, woo hoo, they released another show. But I think for most people, that's why they fall into the abyss, is that there's no consistency.

While this is a hobby and often a passion project for some people, you've got to treat it with respect and respect for your listeners and your audience out there. That, like I said, I think 6 is a great starting point to Release because it gives people something they see, oh, hey, they just not a flash in the pan with one show. But I've got some friends that have brand new shows and they went and did 20 bulk episodes. They uploaded and they released them in 20 days straight. And they just skyrocketed to the top with listeners because they got that crack, that heroin that hit to their listeners. Of course, they had a social media database and they marketed out. They just didn't record it and expect the listeners to come. They actually did a full press court press across social media and email blasts and things like that to help grow their audience.

And the biggest problem is, is that people out there, we think, oh, we're gonna do this and all our friends are gonna listen. I'm surprised how many of my close friends, like close friends, have never listened to an episode after 500. My own brothers don't listen to the show. And I've interviewed some interesting people and it's like they just don't do it. The other thing is it matters so much to get people to go on to Apple podcasts or wherever you get them and subscribe because that's how the rankings happen and this and that. And I'll make the ask for people to go subscribe and leave a comment. And very few people take action in the world we live in now. People are so caught up in their own, you know, every second that very few people are out there helping you achieve those numbers. Therefore, better damn well promote it 10 times more than you think you have to.

I would agree to that. My closest friends don't listen to the podcast either because our friends aren't in the same niche that I'm in. A lot of my friends are like, oh, Scott, that crazy marketing guy. And then there. But it's funny because we have helped some of my friends come back and start their own shows on their own niche. It's been kind of fun, that aspect of things. So where do you see yourself going in the next five years, Tom?

You know, I don't know. I toyed with the idea hitting 500 and just shutting the show down and saying, okay, check mark. I did that. However, it's a great marketing tool for me. I thought about starting a new show and sort of building from scratch, but I would lose sort of the following that I have. I'd have to push really hard to migrate people. So I'm going to continue with cool things entrepreneurs do. It gives me that action to be able to have sort of this university access to how do I grow my own business and share it with other people who listen to. What I would like to do with it is figure out sort of how to intentionally monetize it. Like I said, I've been fortunate. I'm doing a show for someone else. I'm in the talks with two other associations. I like doing it. So I'd probably like to host maybe two or three other people's shows and then continue just to grow mine. Get the listeners up higher, but then figure out what I'm missing. And that's why you're going to be putting on a podcaster's sort of Mastermind two day intensive. One of the reasons I want to come is I know I'm missing a hundred things that are low lying fruit. I'd like to just figure those things out.

I'm pretty excited about that. We did one recently in Orlando with about a dozen podcasters and I walked away with some really great nuggets. You know, you and I have been a part of One Day Masterminds before with some of our other podcasters and that's always been the highlight because I think there's so many events out there that are all about for the starting your podcast or launching your podcast. There's not so many things out there for experienced podcasters and us being able to learn from each other exclusively so that we're able to really hone our skills because we all know there's plenty of listeners out there. I call eyeballs and earballs for everybody to listen to. But that's the thing. Yeah, the two day event we're looking at, I think it'd be great if we have 20, 25 people that are doing podcasting and doing it on a regular basis. I think it works well and helps you exponentially grow.

And you're only charging like nothing. I mean, it's such a small little. I saw it and I thought, oh God, what's this going to cost me? And I was like, sign me up.

Yeah, we keep the cost low so we keep the content rich.

Well, so here's what I think. I think if you're listening to this and you have a podcast and you've got some legs to it, I mean, you don't have to be 500 episodes and you live in Austin, Texas, or you're willing to come to Austin. I think you need to track Scott down at the Note Closer show or whatever other email he wants to give you to find him. And I think you need to look at what he's doing for these two days, for this Podcasters Intensive. Because I'm really excited.

Thanks, man. Yeah, it's Mass Media Mastermind is the website Mastermind.

I was not going to pull that out of my.

That's okay. Mass Media Mastermind. We got a loose itinerary and going through a variety things. I think everybody struggles. Some things people are great with content. Other people are like, I want to monetize this a little bit more. I want to get sponsors, I want to. How are there some cool tools? Last time we did, somebody came in with a whole network of shows that everybody was excited to be a part of and it just kind of mind boggling. So we're pretty stoked about that.

But I was the first person to sign up. I don't know if there's another sign up I have to do on the website, but on Facebook, I clicked I'm going and it said two people were going. It was you and me. So, yeah, as far as I'm concerned, I was the first person.

You were the first person to rsvp? Yes, that's correct. You gotta go sign up for it and pay for it.

Oh, yeah, I'll do that.

But. But the thing is, I'm good for it.

Don't give my.

I know you're good for it, brother. I know you're good for it. That's the funny thing, is that we know that not a big deal. But that's the thing, I think is most importantly is to surround yourself with people that are doing things. And that's when I got started on this Journey as a podcast. Two years ago, I was running around trying to find other podcasters that were doing things to get an idea of comparative analysis. How is my show doing? You know, And I was talking to other real estate podcasts and on tensorflowers, we were doing really well. And that's the thing, I think you have to keep in mind, if you've got a podcast out there, is don't try to compare yourself to somebody who's five years ahead of you or three years ahead of you. Talk to them. Hey, how were your numbers when you first started and go that route? I mean, I'm competitive in nature. I always want to beat and be the number one if I can. I know I'm not gonna be the number one podcast out there, but in my niche I can. I know I'm gonna own it and rock it out there. Just like you're doing your niche and you're rocking and rolling and it's leading to business and relationships coming the outside and then really Helping. I think it helps you bounce out of bed every day. Cause you're excited about it. Huh?

Well, that and I spent 10 years. My topic that I spoke about was about how to. In a world where everybody had moved to their phones, how do we get people to connect in a gadget crazy world? And that was my keynote for 10 years. And I will tell you, the best networking tool I've ever found has been this podcast. Not only from being able to connect with the guests I have or the audience that I have, but I've made some really good friendships with other podcasters, Justin Schenk and Adam Scheibly, and then yourself. And I mean, the list would be 25 people long, many of them through the New Media Summit, but not all of them. I've met so many really cool podcasters who are willing to help.

Yeah, that's the thing. It's really a. In my neck of the woods, we call something called coopetition. And that's really. I've seen that in the podcasting space. Everybody's really willing to help and achieve things because it's. There's so much bandwidth out there and so much opportunity that you're not really stealing anything. And it actually works better if you're working with other people to grow your audience or share what's going on.

Absolutely. And I will be honest, I have become very proud of cool things entrepreneurs do. I mean, I don't want to be braggadocious, but I'm really proud of what the show is. And there's one guy, he's a former FBI agent, and he wanted to become a speaker on cybersecurity. And we talked like four or five years ago. He was a listener of the show. He wanted to be an entrepreneur, but he was a career government employee. And he listened to the show, got inspired, called me. I gave him some ideas. He spent the next three years speaking in his job as much as he could so he could get good. I told him, look, it's great that you've given a few speeches. You've got to be good. The only way you get good as a speaker is to get out there and speak. So he was the FBI's, what do you call, expert on speaking on cybersecurity. And he spoke hundreds of times. And then when he retired and took his pension, he was a great speaker and had been prepping for three years, and now he's booked solid. He makes more money as a speaker than I do. And I'm like, wait a minute. No, no, no. The student shouldn't surpass the teacher. But the fact is, he tells me all the time that he wouldn't have made that transition from what he did to what he's doing now if he hadn't been inspired by cool things entrepreneurs do. Not just me, but the people I interviewed. And he listened to the show religiously and just took ideas and nuggets and theories and spent a long time prepping for it. So when he launched, he was ready. And it goes, we've said this five different ways today. So many people want it in five minutes, not five years.

Yeah, that's the biggest thing, that's the most disappointing thing, is I've had friends that were going to launch a podcast that never got past episode one or they did everything. They bought all the microphone, the headphones, the webcam, and then never got over that hump.

I think the microphone companies have made a lot of money off 700,000 podcasts.

Yeah, you see a lot of blue Yetis on Amazon and Craigslist now. Is there anything about podcasting that frustrates you personally with stuff?

The list of what frustrates me about the world is long. So, yeah, I mean, that's without question. I think the thing that frustrates me the most is just figuring out how to differentiate yourself in a world. Like I said, I have a broad business podcast. I mean, I call it entrepreneurship, but it's business. And so when I started, there wasn't a lot of entrepreneur or solopreneur business y podcasts. Now there's 400 billion people who tune in and listen. They come back. But it's getting people that first time to say, I'll check out this show.

That's the big thing too is sometimes we all think go through content kind of gets low. We're like, what are we gonna talk about today? What am I talking about this episode? And some of the things that there's been. Some times I've had some guests on my show they're pretty excited about and they just. The episodes just flopped. Like, I've had a couple ex NFL players that have been on that are now in their real estate and the note community. And I was really excited, thought that would do well. And they just absolutely bummed.

I'll tell you what frustrates me. What frustrates me is the people who don't promote being on the show, they don't retweet it, they don't put it on their social media. I ran into a woman recently and I had spoken on why to have a podcast not to get rich, but why? To have it as a marketing tool. She missed my speech, but she came up to me afterwards and she said, I get asked to be on a lot of shows, but they all want me to promote it. And I'm like, well, promote it. And she goes, no, you don't understand. I'm an influencer. I only promote people who are more famous than me because that pulls me up. I don't ever talk about the little people. I mean, she didn't use the word little people, but I barfed in my mouth when she said that. I thought, then don't go on the show. If you're not going to tell people, hey, I was on the show, check it out and help raise that person. Don't go on the show. So every show I've ever been on, even if it was five years ago, if they tag me on Twitter or Instagram or whatever, I hit the retweet button. Because hitting like says, I see you told your audience about me. Hitting retweet says, I will tell my audience that you told people about me. And so I retweet everything. And I'm not an influencer, Whatever. But at the same time, even if I was, I would promote anybody who said something nice about me. Why not?

Yeah, I agree totally with. That's always a frustrating thing when you will send links or sends. Production company actually creates infographics that we call Ego Bait. Thanks. Yeah, I don't email them. They send the email to my guests with the links, the images. Very easy for them to share. And it's always.

Sometimes I'm in the midst of something, so if they send me that, I don't share it. But if they share it on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter, where you can retweet, I will then put that to my wall or whatever it's called on the different things, because that's easy to do. So sometimes I'm not always able to take what they've given me and I'm on an airplane or something and I don't do it. And then I forget. But if they put it out there, even years later, I ran into a podcaster. He said, you were the only person. Every time, because he has it on like a rotation, like every few weeks, he goes, you hit retweet almost every time. And I said, that's because that's the world. It's called social media. Not I will promote myself and nobody else media.

Yeah, that's the funniest thing is, is seeing people like you Know, when you ask them, they're sharing that stuff. So we have the point now we just tag people in there as best we can. We'll post it and tag them or at them on LinkedIn. And to do that, what platforms are you seeing the most engagement with on yourself outside of itunes or podcasts? I'm talking like social media and other things like that that you see works well for you.

So I was, starting in 2005, I was a blogger, and it used to be that if I blogged and then put it out on any social media, back then it was probably Twitter. I. I would get hits to my website like, boom, I tweeted it. A bunch of people went right away. Fast forward 14 years. No, I don't see a lot of traction from social media. I will tell you, though, for me, because I have a business podcast and I'm a business speaker, LinkedIn is probably my best engagement. And I recently posted something that said, hey, celebrating 500 episodes. And the more people comment, the more people see it. So we're usually, if I post something, 1500 people will see it, and then it sort of fades away. I had like 6,000 views on the thing about the podcast because everybody was like, oh, congratulations, Congratulations. So what I found is even with LinkedIn, if you don't get engagement, nobody even knows you posted it.

That's the truth. LinkedIn's been a big thing for us on the business side because we do create many articles and reshare things there, and it's helped us grow our audience on there, and we're leveraging that as best we can to drive engagement.

So what's your biggest frustration in the podcast world?

My biggest frustration in the podcast world, I would say it's people that just, they lack that patience. Here's something that frustrates me. I get solicited for people to be on my podcast all the time. People like, hey, I think it'd be a great guest on your podcast. I don't try to pimp my audience out. I try to keep my audience very niche. And so, yeah, I'll make some exceptions to bringing an entrepreneur or some business aspect of things or sometimes motivation for stuff. But when I get these people, like, I have got, this guy's got a new book, he'd be a great guest. I'm like, okay, I want you to send me 100 copies of your book, right? And I'm like, I said, well, it costs me to do my podcast, it cost me to produce it. I'm going to take those hundred copies and send it out to my membership. One of the things that we've monetized with the membership. And so it's going to go out monthly in a swag bags and these people are going to share it for you. It also allows me to be able to send stuff out in a swag bag that I don't have to pay for. And people get, oh no, we can't do. They cost me 10 bucks a book. I'm like, okay, then you're not a fit.

I find it interesting because in the last two years, Steve and some other people have posted or sold directories of podcasts and I've shown up in them. And So I get 25 to 40 inquiries a week. And until recently I've gotten a little bit behind. So Now I'm doing two interviews a week. But I was doing one solo episode and one interview a week. So that's 52 interviews in a year and I'm getting 40 inquiries a week. So what I tell people is I need big cups. So if you have more than 300 employees, I'll move you to the top of the list. Because I interview a lot of solopreneurs like myself, people like you, who maybe have a couple of team members. And so I say, if you have 300 or more employees, I'll move you to the top of the list. Well, most of these people don't. Most of them have spun out from business, they've written a book or whatever I say, or if your person goes out onto LinkedIn and posts two or three times about why my podcast is good, I'll move them to the top of the list. And I've had PR people tell me my people don't promote you, you promote them. And I go, that's so funny. It's a two way street. And I've only had one person ever like go pimp the heck out of my show and then approach me to be on it. And I moved to the top.

Now, are you speaking on a lot of other podcasts as well too?

Yeah, I've been a guest this year on 30 shows. So my goal is maybe not one a week, but my goal is in a year do about 30 shows.

Nice. And that's obviously helped counts because we're.

Posting it on both shows. This is my show and your show. So this is.

Yeah, I love that. And that's the thing is I think that's one of the ways to help grow our audience. I was talking to a BNI networking thing yesterday and a realtor approached Me and said, hey, I want to start a podcast. I'm like, okay, great. I said, what's going to be on? She told me. I was like, okay, that's a good subject about your stuff and stories and things like that. I said, if you. I would also recommend that you speak in other people's podcasts. And she actually looked at me. Why would I want to do that? Because their audience is going to hear about you and go to your show. And she's like, I don't know about that. I'm like, that's one of the easiest ways to help grow your audience and grow. Get the word out we're doing. Because then it's like you're out publicly speaking, whether it's 12 people or 8,000 people.

I never worry if someone has a podcast and they want to interview me. I never say, well, how many downloads do you have? Because the truth is. But one of those people is like, wow, I should listen to his show. Or, wow, he'd be great for my sales kickoff. It's through the roof. If they have 5 million and nobody does crapola, it doesn't matter either. So, yeah, I think that the answer is I just say yes to being interviewed because you just don't know what's going to come out of it.

Yeah, that's the truth. It only takes one person to hear and then reach out to be business changing, life changing, or as I say, podcast changing. We're going out there.

That's what's going to happen with this episode. Because everyone who's listening on my side is going to be like, we need to know more about Scott Carson and vice versa.

Same here, brother.

Change your life.

Scott, Good stuff, man. Tom, what's the best way for people to get a hold of you?

Best way to find me is on my website, tomsinger.com that's T H O M S I N-E R.com or go to wherever you find your favorite podcasts and look for Cool things entrepreneurs do. Pops up when you type cool things. A little green round logo that says Cool things entrepreneurs do. It's like a little green marble is my logo. So. And how do people find Scott Carson?

You can go to anywhere that podcasts are played for the note closer show. Or you can go to my main website, we close notes dot com. That's We Close notes.

We Close notes dot com. And from there you can find out about all the stuff you do because you kind of link everything there. Right.

Exactly. Just like you do on domsinger.com Good stuff, man.

Hey, I'm glad we shared this episode celebrating. How many episodes did we cross?

500. Yeah, if we were in baseball, we'd be in the hall of fame.

That's right. I mean, you only have to bat 300 to be doing that. 500. We bam.

Yeah. 500 homers, baby. Awesome. Good stuff, Tom.

Hey, thank you. And hey, thanks everybody on my side for listening to the show. I say it every episode. If it wasn't for the audience, why would we do this? We wouldn't have a show. So thank you for being a continued part of the cool things entrepreneurs do community.

Awesome. Good stuff there. Go out, take some action from stuff you've learned. If you want to start a podcast, get started. Do it today or go take action. And we'll see you all at the top, everybody. Bye.